Getting to the bottom of the affordable-housing problem

Jan. 19, 2007

Written by

Debra West

Affordable housing has been one of Andrew Spano's top priorities as Westchester County executive. So when officials found that the county was being sued for violating the Fair Housing Act and accused of accepting $45 million in federal housing funds without actively promoting fair housing, they were stunned.

"I was flabbergasted, because I know what the county is trying to do, and that it is doing the best it can," said George M. Raymond, chairman of the Westchester County Housing Opportunity Commission. "This county is doing more for affordable housing than any other county in the state. I hope nothing happens to spoil it."

The lawsuit, filed by the Anti-Discrimination Center of Metro New York Inc., a civil rights group, claims that lack of affordable housing keeps Westchester's municipalities racially segregated.

It is a claim that surprised Westchester officials, who had not looked at the affordable-housing problem through the prism of race. In a county where the median price of a home runs in excess of $700,000, where property taxes are the highest in the nation and where even middle-class families flee north to Putnam and beyond to find a house that won't bankrupt them, there seemed so many other factors at play in the affordable-housing crisis.

"Of all the groups we surveyed - public housing authorities, the nonprofits, people who are in the Section-8 program - and all the public hearings we held, nobody identified racial discrimination as being an impediment here in the county," said Norma Drummond, the county's deputy commissioner of planning.

Instead, the surveys identified 13 other impediments to affordable housing - factors like the cost of land, the scarcity of available land, zoning that does not allow multi-family housing and lack of interest from developers. And those are the areas in which the county is focusing its efforts.

The omission of race in Westchester's analysis and the county's failure to "affirmatively further" affordable housing are the basis of the lawsuit.

"Impediments to fair housing include race," said Craig Gurian, executive director of the anti-discrimination center and an adjunct professor at Fordham University School of Law. "How you can possibly do an analysis and not talk about racial discrimination and racial segregation is beyond me. It is really the racial segregation aspect that is at the heart of the lawsuit."

Westchester is the only county the anti-discrimination center has sued under the false claims act. Rockland County, which also receives federal Fair Housing funds, noted the pattern of segregation in its towns and villages, and included racial discrimination as one factor in its 2004 analysis of impediments to affordable housing. Gurian said he didn't study Putnam County's housing segregation patterns.

Selling affordable housing

Affordable housing is a tough sell. When residents come to town meetings, they are more likely to press for reforms like tax reduction or preserving open space than creating housing. Objections to multifamily housing, cluster developments or even allowing accessory apartments in single-family neighborhoods are common at planning and zoning board meetings in communities throughout the county.

The name "affordable housing" itself summons images of the government-built towering red brick "projects" of earlier generations. Because of that, advocates have instead taken to calling it "workforce housing" to reflect the new reality, that the subsidized homes are for working families, not just the poor and destitute. And the income guidelines for qualifying, which are higher than often assumed, reflect that. Under the county's program, a family of four that earns $77,200 or less qualifies for a two- or three-bedroom unit that can cost up to $1,930 a month Drummond said. The cost can cover rent and utilities or mortgage and taxes for a homeowner.

To overcome resistance, the county has launched a public relations campaign - including everything from bus tours of the housing to a video about it on the county's cable television station (channel 504) and Web site (www.westchestergov.com) - to show that today's affordable housing is likely to be scattered here and there among market-rate housing and be all but indistinguishable from its more expensive neighbors.

The county has taken a regional approach to assessing the need for housing. In 1993, the Housing Opportunity Commission recommended that the 43 municipalities in its housing consortium build a total of 5,000 units of affordable housing by 2000. Only 2,309 of those were built, but that didn't stop the county from issuing new, even more optimistic suggestions again in 2005. The new recommendations call for a total of 10,768 units of affordable housing to be built by 2015. (No doubt, need continues to rise, as New York City persists in converting once-affordable housing complexes into out-of-reach complexes, pushing more people north.)

Mount Pleasant, for instance, is obligated under the county plan to build 975 units of affordable housing - even though there had not been even one unit of affordable housing built since 1993, when the county first made its recommendation.

"We have no control over local land use," said Susan Tolchin, the chief adviser to the county executive. "We can't tell a community 'This is what you have to do.' Our goal is to encourage municipalities. What's the saying, 'You get more flies with sugar than with vinegar.'"

As always, the most seductive sweetener is money.

The county has put its money behind its goals. It has bought land and resold it for $1 to developers of affordable housing. It provides money for improving the infrastructure in communities willing to build workforce housing. And it has offered the biggest carrot of them all, offering local communities highly coveted funds for open-space acquisition. The jury is still out on the success of that method.

Missing the mark

The county's affordable-housing plan calls for the Town of Somers to build 224 units of affordable housing by 2015. Though the county's first recommendations were made to Somers more than a dozen years ago, no affordable housing has been built. Nonetheless, last year the county gave Somers $4 million toward the purchase of 654 acres of open space - known as the Angle Fly Preserve - an acquisition that was celebrated by town, county and state officials as an environmental victory. In exchange for the grant, the county asked that Somers make "a good-faith effort" at building affordable housing. If the town doesn't show that it tried its best to build at least 188 units of affordable housing within 10 years, it has to give half of the county's grant - $2 million - back.

Despite the county's largess, the Somers Town Board still seems reluctant to embrace the housing goals. Just this month, the board turned down a proposal set forth by the town's own affordable housing committee to consider a plan for developing a piece of property known as "The Oaks" off Route 100 near the Somers Town Shopping Center. Barry Singer, who serves on the Somers Affordable Housing Board and Master Plan Committee, expressed his frustration to Journal News reporter Chris Serico: "The Town Board made very clear to me that they don't want the dense development that is needed for affordable housing on that property."

And the county's response to Somers? They called a meeting to remind Somers officials of their obligation.

Mary Beth Murphy, the town supervisor, said The Oaks proposal wasn't right for the location, but she points out that the town planning board is considering a proposal for 64 affordable townhouses that would be built across town in the Baldwin Place Planned Hamlet on Route 6.

A similar situation has taken place in Lewisboro, where the county contributed $1 million to the purchase of the 111-acre Houlihan property in 2003. Lewisboro, which is obligated to build 239 units of affordable housing under the county's plan, has yet to build any affordable housing; it has 10 years to build at least 121 units or return half of an open-space grant - $500,000.

Maybe it's time for the county to add more muscle to its requests. Gurian, of the anti-discrimination center, thinks so.

"It is one thing if once upon a time you start out by saying let's just put out some carrots as an incentive and see what happens," Gurian said, referring to the county. "But you can't stay all-carrot and no-stick, and pretend that you are meeting your obligation under the Fair Housing Act. When you are the lead entity of a consortium, you are really in charge of it. You should be requiring the municipalities to do something. Did (the county) ever even threaten to withhold funding from any municipality?"

Gurian contends that Westchester made false claims to the federal government when it applied for and received $45 million in Fair Housing money for the years 2000 to 2005. The lawsuit seeks to force the county to repay triple the amount - or $135 million - plus other penalties.

The county contends the lawsuit is ill-conceived. State law gives municipalities the right of home rule over land-use decisions and so, ultimately, the county's hands are tied, Drummond said. "We have completed 750 units in 20 different communities since 2000, including some municipalities where you would not necessary expect them to be supporting affordable housing, places like Rye and New Castle," Drummond said.